If you’ve been here before, you know repetition and meditative art is one of my favorite themes. Hadieh Shafie’s work therefore falls right in my sweetspot of interests as her pieces require patience and time to craft the scrolls covered in handwritten Farsi and roll them into the amazing sculptures that they become.
I also love that she tends to stick to a single color palette for each piece – like the above. In her own words, however, she says, “What interests me is the tension between control and spontaneity that emerges at every step of creating much of the work.” That’s because as she rolls the scrolls the edge color emerges from the piece itself.
I love the vibrant blue colors in the above piece. In her own reflection of the her happily time-consuming process, she says, “The time it takes to make each work can vary and the time spent in writing and rolling the strips of paper is an important part of the performative aspect of making.” I love the concept of a performative aspect of a piece like this – so often we relegate performative art to certain, more active or more public pieces.
Above and below are an entire piece and a close up of it. It’s interesting to note that the final assembly is where the piece comes together – that in the writing and rolling process the ultimate shape and color patterns are unknown / unplanned. That is the spontaneous piece of her process.
The word that she writes on repeat in her pieces – “love” – in Farsi. Meditate on that!
Tags: 3D, paper, repetitive, sculpture